


Just Be Close

by Stealth_Noodle



Category: Final Fantasy VI
Genre: Comment Fic, F/M, Hand Jobs, Mid-Canon, Porn, Touch-Starved, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000, World of Ruin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-04
Updated: 2014-02-04
Packaged: 2018-01-11 03:28:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1168117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stealth_Noodle/pseuds/Stealth_Noodle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The only discovery that matters in a dead world is that someone else is still alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Be Close

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Porn Battle XV, for the prompts "comfort, unexpected, companionship."

After the lonely silence of the island, even the decimated population of Tzen feels overwhelming. As slowly as she can, Celes glides back into the shadows while Sabin mingles with the crowd. It reminds her of a battlefield, so many milling bodies that sanity requires her to perceive as faceless. The greatest difference is that no one is looking to her now for orders.

"You hear that, Celes?" Sabin booms over the ambient rumbles of gratitude and grief. "The inn's putting us up for free, best room in the house! Celes?" He turns to where she was standing before, frowns, and sweeps his gaze until he finds her. "Excuse me," he tells the grateful woman who still doesn't want to let go of his arm.

"You can stay," Celes says in a low voice when he reaches her. "I'm going to camp outside."

For a moment, he looks puzzled. His eyes dart between her and the throng. "You're right," he says loudly, for the crowd's benefit, "we really should be on our way."

He doesn't ask, but he walks close beside her, as if he's afraid she'll vanish the moment he loses contact. She's grateful for it; every time his arm brushes hers, she feels as if she's been starved for touch. Since she awoke, her hands have touched burlap sheets and rotting fish and corpseflesh and knotted wood and the hilt of her sword, but the closest she has come to living warmth was the gull that fluttered against her fingers.

When they find a dusty patch of earth, they stop to make camp. The air is cold, and the grass is sharp and dry, the color of rust. As they assemble the tent, their hands keep tangling together. Her hands are still thinner than feels right.

"You know," says Sabin, "the first time Master Duncan took me out overnight in the woods for training, I was scared out of my wits. I wouldn't admit it, though, or I never would've heard the end of it from Vargas. But it was just so... not like the desert. All those crazy animal noises, and you couldn't see the sky through the trees. I was still really used to sleeping in a bed back then, too."

Maybe he wants Celes to laugh with him, but she can't. Instead she asks, "Where have you been this past year?"

"Well, I was pretty banged up. Makes sense, right? I mean, we fell out of an airship. A couple of fishermen outside Albrook took me in until I got back on my feet."

She can't imagine him fishing, unless it's with his bare hands. "Why did you leave?"

He grins crookedly. "Well, I had to find you guys, right? And it turns out I'm pretty lousy at fishing." He must not want to talk about Edgar any more than she wants to talk about Cid. More softly, he adds, "What about you?"

Death consumed an entire island, but twice spat her back out. Maybe the dead esper inside her has ruined her taste. "I thought I was the only one left in the world," she replies at length. She keeps her tone dispassionate, which is the only way she has ever been able to speak of things that hurt. "As a general, I never tolerated defeatism in my troops. 'Despair is the desertion of the mind.' But without anyone to refuse to tolerate it in me, I easily fell prey to it."

Sabin frowns. "But you didn't. You're here now, aren't you?"

"I'm here now." Less agreement, more a reminder to herself. The temperature is falling, and the sky is turning a deeper shade of disease; he must be cold by now. She could start a fire, but there's no kindling here for it to burn. Fingering a piece of magicite through her pocket, she says, "Can you finish setting up the tent?"

"Yeah, sure. What're you—" He sucks in his breath sharply as she sets Ifrit's magicite on the dead ground and bids it burn. Flames tumble and weave through it without consuming anything but air.

The fire is too warm for her comfort, but she sits near it anyway to stay near him. He feels more steadfast than the broken earth; his breaths are less capricious than the sour wind. It's madness to think that his survival guarantees the others', but this is a mad world that she's been reborn into.

Even the stars look wrong when they come out. Even the sky is broken.

"You know," Sabin says after a long silence, "I hate to say it, but Tzen got off pretty easy today. Last time I saw the Light of Judgment hit, the ground split open and swallowed people."

Her hand twitches around the hilt of the sword she isn't holding, the one she didn't twist far and deep enough into Kefka. She might as well have turned and run it through Cid, through every bloated corpse floating around the island, through every person who tumbled screaming into an abyss.

Sabin's arm encircles her. "Hey, are you okay? You're shaking."

No one in this world is okay. She takes a slow breath that his touch helps her steady. "It's been a long year," she replies.

"I'll say."

He keeps his arm around her, and she finds herself shifting closer and closer until she's nearly in his lap. He's so _alive_ ; his chest rises and falls out of sync with hers, and it's so good not to feel as if her breaths are the only ones disturbing the air. There's no one else here to look to her for orders or sneer at her weakness or waste away under her care.

His other arm wraps around her and holds her close. She rests her head on his chest. When she shifts a bit to make herself more comfortable, she feels something hard poke against her inner thigh.

"Sorry," Sabin says, a little sheepishly. "And here Master Duncan used to praise my dedication to ascetic training. Let me—"

"Wait." She fastens her hand to his wrist when he tries to move. "Stay close to me."

He sighs but obeys. "Guess I really am happy to see you, huh?"

It's such a stupid thing to say that she laughs. It's been a very long time since Celes laughed. When she rocks her hips, making his heart beat faster and his breaths puff hotter into her hair, his arms tighten around her but don't try to hold her still.

He doesn't stop her, either, from untying his sash and freeing him from his loose trousers, nestling his erection between her thighs. She doesn't know what she wants. She doesn't even want, really; she isn't aroused, just needs to keep touching him. He's hot and hard, and he hisses under the chill of her hand.

His fingertips slide uncertainly over the jut of her hip. "Should I...?"

Gently, she rebuffs them. Maintaining the fire puts a low, steady strain on her, but she still has energy enough for a weak healing spell that slicks her palm and affords her touch some warmth. Sabin groans as she wraps her fingers around his shaft and begins to stroke.

It doesn't take long. His arms tremble around her, and he buries his face in her hair. His heart pounds against her back. She keeps pumping as he spills between their legs, painting a defiant white gleam over the dead earth.

After wiping him off with her hand, she tucks him back into his trousers. Sabin is still breathing hard when he says, "And you're sure... I can't do anything for you?"

She can feel the way his sinews twine his bones, can trace his breaths from his lips to his lungs. There's nothing dead inside him. "Just stay close to me," Celes replies, resting her head over his heart.


End file.
